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- Convenor:
-
Rachel Beatty Riedl
(Northwestern University)
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- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- KH112
- Start time:
- 29 June, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Zurich
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel analyzes the political consequences of new urban encounters, from technological infrastructure projects to demographic patterns of circular migration and new forms of media exchange.
Long Abstract:
With urbanization comes opportunity for new encounters: with the state, with media, with other citizens from varied backgrounds. This panel asks: What are the political consequences of such encounters? We interrogate this from multiple perspectives. Paller and Klopp look at new encounters with the state in urban areas and the possible range of responses from political engagement to seeking alternatives and exit. Philipps seeks to demonstrate how cities and urban spaces provide the potential to change and transform politics through the introduction to new forms of media, and the spatial configurations of how news and information is received and interpreted in a politicized urban world. Robinson and Riedl use new survey data to assess how citizens continually recreate home in multiple spaces simultaneously - and particularly in their urban environment - and how this shapes their social identities and political behavior. Pitcher and Croese examine how the authoritarian regime in Angola relies on different locations and urban designs and materials to socially engineer particular kinds of political and economic relationships with the urban poor and the middle class in Luanda. Guma examines new urban infrastructural systems to determine how they reproduce or challenge particular power relations through everyday encounters and how such technology is controlled or contested by different actors throughout the political space. This panel provides a distinctive focus on the urban citizen in Africa and on their social perceptions and reactions to their urban environment.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Anne Pitcher (University of Michigan) Sylvia Croese (University of the Witwatersrand)
Paper short abstract:
The paper claims that Angola's authoritarian regime relies on different residential locations, architectural designs, and construction materials to socially engineer particular kinds of political and economic relationships with the urban poor and the middle class in Luanda.
Paper long abstract:
Although much of the urban studies literature focuses on the modernist, developmental, or neoliberal drivers of urban restructuring in the global South, it overlooks the ways in which many regimes, especially those with more authoritarian features, rely on the creation of satellite cities and housing projects to reinforce their legitimacy and assert their political authority. In recent years, a number of authoritarian governments from Ethiopia to Singapore have provided housing to the middle class and the poor, not only to alleviate housing shortages, or to bolster a burgeoning real estate market, but also to "order power" and to buy the loyalty of residents. To illustrate a series of theoretical claims regarding the city building inclinations of authoritarian states in developing countries, we rely on a public opinion survey of nearly 300 poor and middle class respondents from three housing projects on the outskirts of Luanda, Angola. We combine survey data with interviews of residents, government officials, real estate agents, and housing managers to demonstrate how the state employs different locations, architectural designs, and housing materials to socially engineer particular kinds of political and economic relationships with the urban poor and the middle class. Alongside increasing social and spatial differentiation brought about by state policies, however, we also document the ways in which such policies have been captured by market forces, state officials, and the everyday actions of ordinary residents who turn houses into businesses or commodities.
Rachel Beatty Riedl (Northwestern University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper breaks down a dichotomous conceptualization of urban and rural citizens and uses new survey data from Nairobi, Kenya, to demonstrate the multi-dimensional linkages that connect urban residents to the rural periphery.
Paper long abstract:
Given the important demographic trends of rapid urbanization across sub-Saharan Africa, how are the politics transformed if at all? This paper breaks down a dichotomous conceptualization of urban and rural citizens and uses new survey data from Nairobi, Kenya, to demonstrate the multi-dimensional linkages that connect urban residents to the rural periphery. Yet not all of these dimensions - such as economic diversification and investment, social networks, spiritual practices, administrative procedures, judicial processes, and political influence - have equal effect for urban residents' identity and political behavior. We investigate three inter-related questions: What specific connections constitute meaningful urban-rural linkages, and how are they adapted and transformed by different types of citizens? Which mechanisms can potentially diminish or replace ties to the rural world for the urban citizen? And how do these changes influence patterns of ethnic self-identification and political behavior? In sum, we assess the degree to which different dimensions of linkage have specific consequences for identity politics in the contemporary African city.
Prince Guma (British Institute in Eastern Africa)
Paper short abstract:
This paper presents empirical evidence of the synergetic, dialectic and heterogeneous correlation and co-evolution between technical systems and urban spheres within the mobile age.
Paper long abstract:
There is synergetic, dialectic and heterogeneous correlation and co-evolution between technical systems and urban spheres in the mobile age. Using Kibera as a case study, this paper follows the recent spiraling and constellation of these ambitious infrastructure development investments in part enabled by the uptake and integration of ICTs and new mobile technologies perhaps in a manner reminiscent of the rush to build in cities of the global South. The study investigates how spheres, overrun with a pervasiveness of mobile-enabled infrastructure development systems are entangled with a matrix of socio-cultural significations and technosocial configurations. Consequently, we draw from electricity infrastructure engagements in Kibera to examine how Kibera as a geography of encounter is constructed and reconstructed through engagement with new technologies. Essentially, we pair up Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Urban Studies to understand the centrality of infrastructural and technological systems as rubrics of urban transition and transformation in the mobile age. Through discursive elaboration and empirical investigation, exemplary experiences are presented to demonstrate how different Kenya Power promotes, markets, deploy the new technologies amidst a wide range of conflicting intermediaries, but also how Kibera's inhabitants think about them, understand them (for themselves), and act around them.
Jeffrey Paller (University of Gothenburg) Jacqueline Klopp (Columbia University)
Paper short abstract:
We explore the politics of urban growth in Accra and Nairobi. We explain when neighborhoods engage with the state, and whether they choose to exit the formal system, voice their political grievances, or remain loyal to the governing regime.
Paper long abstract:
African cities have long histories of urbanization, which include illegal property allocation, land invasions and squatting, immigrant and population expulsions, demolitions, exclusive urban planning and the formation of parallel governance structures. These historically shaped processes contribute to production and reproduction of socially segregated spatial organization, and unequal access to services and urban space today. In this paper, we explore the politics of urban growth—what we call contentious urbanization—in two African cities: Accra and Nairobi. We examine the conditions under which neighborhoods politically engage with the state, and whether they choose to exit the formal system, voice their political grievances, or remain loyal to the governing regime. We argue that these decisions depend on a mix of political factors that cannot be reduced to simple state capacity or demographic factors that are dominant in the academic literature. We pay close attention to the informal networks of power and brokerage that mediate how slum communities access land, space and services. The paper offers insights into the needed transformation of urban politics required to improve service delivery and address inequity in ethnically diverse and weak-formally institutionalized African cities.
Joschka Philipps (University of Bayreuth)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores urbanity through the lens of knowledge production. Looking at the Guinean transition period (2008-10), it inquires into how the city juxtaposes a variety of interpretations of political history and how political conflicts align with conflicts of knowledge production.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores urbanity through the lens of knowledge production in a context of uncertainty. It inquires how knowledge is produced about the Guinean 'transition' (2008-10), a recent political period of two years with three different regimes and four acting presidents, in which political alliances, networks, and antagonisms steadily shifted. It asks how certainty is established, and how is uncertainty dealt with, when different media disseminate heterogeneous and contradictory truths, when different social circles within and across different neighborhoods, in different languages, offer a variety of interpretations that the city juxtaposes and intertwines day by day in ordinary encounters. And finally, it wonders how such urbanity can be recognized as a potential glimpse into future urbanities, where diversity is ubiquitous and where political interests and conflicts are likely to align quite palpably with interests and conflicts of knowledge production. Based on surveys, interviews, and ethnographic research in Conakry, Guinea, mostly amongst journalists, politicians and activists, youth subcultures, and international development staff, this paper traces these questions across diverse settings. Inspired by the writings of Gilbert Simondon and AbdouMaliq Simone, it highlights the city as an indefinite space of encounters, with all the potentials and politics that come with it.